* False Quote:David Ben-Gurion: 'We will expel the Arabs and take their place." The original text of this letter shows that Ben-Gurion actually wrote the opposite: "We do not want to and we do not have to expel the Arabs and take their place. . . "

* Distorted Quote:Theodor Herzl: "We shall have to spirit the penniless population (the Arabs) across the border . . . while denying it any employment in our country."

As Efraim Karsh has ably shown, this is a truncated quote. The more complete quote is:

When we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that receives us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly … It goes without saying that we shall respectfully tolerate persons of other faiths and protect their property, their honor, and their freedom with the harshest means of coercion. This is another area in which we shall set the entire world a wonderful example … Should there be many such immovable owners in individual areas [who would not sell their property to us], we shall simply leave them there and develop our commerce in the direction of other areas which belong to us.

Thus, Herzl spoke of trying to move out poor inhabitants by finding them employment in other countries, and he spoke of the benefits that he believed locals would receive. He also indicated that those who could not be convinced to sell their land could simply stay.

* Out of Context:Ben-Gurion: "I favor partition because when we become a strong power we will abolish partition and spread throughout Palestine." In fact, in the meeting in question Ben-Gurion stressed that expansion would occur via "mutual understanding and Jewish-Arab agreement." The relevant part of the actual protocol reads:

Mr. Ben-Gurion: The starting point for a solution of the question of the Arabs in the Jewish State is, in his view, the need to prepare the ground for an Arab-Jewish agreement; he supports [the establishment of] the Jewish State [on a small part of Palestine], not because he is satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we constitute a large force following the establishment of the state – we will cancel the partition [of the country between Jews and Arabs] and we will expand throughout the Land of Israel.

Mr. Shapira [a JAE member]: By force as well?

Mr. Ben-Gurion: [No]. Through mutual understanding and Jewish-Arab agreement. So long as we are weak and few the Arabs have neither the need nor the interest to conclude an alliance with us... And since the state is only a stage in the realization of Zionism and it must prepare the ground for our expansion throughout the whole country through Jewish-Arab agreement – we are obliged to run the state in such a way that will win us the friendship of the Arabs both within and outside the state. (from Efraim Karsh, “Falsifying the Record: Benny Morris, David Ben-Gurion and the ’Transfer’ Idea," Israel Affairs, V4, No. 2, Winter 1997, p52-53)

* Distorted/Truncated Quote:Moshe Dayan: "There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population." In the full quote, Dayan makes clear that the much of the land were purchased, not that the Palestinians were dispossessed:

We came to a region of land that was inhabited by Arabs, and we set up a Jewish state. In a considerable number of places, we purchased the land from Arabs and set up Jewish villages where there had once been Arab villages. You don't even know the names [of the previous Arab villages] and I don't blame you, because those geography books aren't around anymore. Not only the books, the villages aren't around. Nahalal was established in the place of Mahalul, and Gvat was established in the place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Huneifis and Kfar Yehoshua in the place of Tel Shaman. There isn't any place that was established in an area where there had not at one time been an Arab settlement.

* Questionable, Unverified Source: Clifford claims that Ben-Gurion wrote: "If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That it natural, we have taken their country." In fact, according to Nahum Goldmann, Ben-Gurion allegedly said this to him. Goldmann was an adversary of Ben-Gurion, and he came out with this alleged quote, verbatim, in his book published two decades later (The Jewish Paradox, 1978), five years after Ben-Gurion died. There was no recording of the quote, and Ben-Gurion was no longer around to dispute it.

And, finally, here's a real Ben-Gurion quote that Clifford chose not to share:

In our state there will be non-Jews as well — and all of them will be equal citizens; equal in everything without any exception; that is: the state will be their state as well. ...The attitude of the Jewish State to its Arab citizens will be an important factor—though not the only one—in building good neighbourly relations with the Arab States. If the Arab citizen will feel at home in our state, and if his status will not be the least different from that of the Jew, and perhaps better than the status of the Arab in an Arab state, and if the state will help him in a truthful and dedicated way to reach the economic, social, and cultural level of the Jewish community, then Arab distrust will accordingly subside and a bridge to a Semitic, Jewish-Arab alliance, will be built... (Ba-Ma'Araha Vol IV, Part 2, pp. 260, 265, quoted in Fabricating Israeli History, Efraim Karsh, p.67)

Comments

The 48 war was the was the result of the Palestinians together with their Arab allies to perform ethnic cleansing on the Jews and their failure to complete it.
Every single Jew in the parts of the Mandate seized by the Arabs was expelled from their homes. No exceptions. They even dynamited the entire ancient Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem in an attempt to wipe out the history of Jewish residence there. They also made it illegal for a Jew to live in the areas of the former Mandate that they controlled, including East Jerusalem, West Bank, Gaza and Jordan.
850,000 Jews were also forced from the Arab countries.
After the 5 Arab armies attacked Israel in 48,
Haj Amin Al Husseini stated:
I declare a holy war, my muslim brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!
The Arab League Secretary, General Azzam Pasha declared “a holy war. He said, “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.

Posted by: Ed Frias at August 5, 2012 10:08 AM

Standwithus is putting out their own billboards on the MTA in response to the lies of Clifford.
What Standwithus should do is, post pics of Palestinian terrorists using civilians as human shields and firing into Israel.
Look at this video.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWQQFJXMrg4&feature=related

Look at the 3 pics from 4:40 to 4:47
Also look at the pic at 8:39.
If that isn’t Palestinian child abuse, then nothing is.
Also look at the pic at 8:23 of a Palestinian gunman dragging a Palestinian child as a human shield.
Then post Golda Meir’s famous words about Palestinian child abuse.
When the Palestinians love their children more then they hate Jews, then their will be peace.

Posted by: Ken Kelso at August 5, 2012 10:19 AM

I am impressed by the accuracy and value of the first two comments by Ed and Ken. But I wonder if the real problem is not the almost unrelenting neccessity the American and Western left has in claiming all of the worlds problems are the result of Judeo-Christian traditions, capitalism and the colonial period. While there might be some modicum of moral worth in being able to acknowldege our failings for the sake of self-improvement the liberals apply such values to scourge themselves bordering on sadism. President Obama making global trips that entail apologizies for America's existence, Geraldo giving Palestinian propgandist carte blanche to redress some percieved social wrong. The pattern isn't simply a form of anti-semitism. I think it goes deeper, Mike Savage capsulized it best when he described "Liberalism as a mental disorder." By imposing the short view that America needs to purge its baseline religions to achieve modernity and equality is inane. Liberals in positions of power have no enduring values. The values they do have are porous and subject to the sort of relativity that makes them trivial. That is how anti-semitic or anti Judeo-Christian values come to be expressed in the form of Pro-Palestianin, and pro-Shariah law states now forming as "democracies" in the wake of the Arab Spring. Liberals like Obama are unable to even consider the possibility that Islam has inherent inequities that form many of the problems the liberals blame on America, capitalism and colonialism and finds expression in anti-semitism which is just old fashioned Jew hating, Zionist versus Arab Jew? Please.

Posted by: jeb stuart at August 9, 2012 11:45 AM

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